This great Queen and her successors, by considering conformity and loyalty as identical at length made them so.  With respect to the Catholics, indeed, the rigour of persecution abated after her death.  James soon found that they were unable to injure him, and that the animosity which the Puritan party felt towards them drove them of necessity to take refuge under his throne.  During the subsequent conflict, their fault was anything but disloyalty.  On the other hand, James hated the Puritans with more than the hatred of Elizabeth.  Her aversion to them was political; his was personal.  The sect had plagued him in Scotland, where he was weak; and he was determined to be even with them in England, where he was powerful.  Persecution gradually changed a sect into a faction.  That there was anything in the religious opinions of the Puritans which rendered them hostile to monarchy has never been proved to our satisfaction.  After our civil contests, it became the fashion to say that Presbyterianism was connected with Republicanism; just as it has been the fashion to say, since the time of the French Revolution, that Infidelity is connected with Republicanism.  It is perfectly true that a church constituted on the Calvinistic model will not strengthen the hands of the sovereign so much as a hierarchy which consists of several ranks, differing in dignity and emolument, and of which all the members are constantly looking to the Government for promotion.  But experience has clearly shown that a Calvinistic church, like every other church, is disaffected when it is persecuted, quiet when it is tolerated, and actively loyal when it is favoured and cherished.  Scotland has had a Presbyterian establishment during a century and a half.  Yet her General Assembly has not, during that period, given half so much trouble to the government as the Convocation of the Church of England gave during the thirty years which followed the Revolution.  That James and Charles should have been mistaken in this point is not surprising.  But we are astonished, we must confess, that men of our own time, men who have before them the proof of what toleration can effect, men who may see with their own eyes that the Presbyterians are no such monsters when government is wise enough to let them alone, should defend the persecutions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as indispensable to the safety of the church and the throne.

How persecution protects churches and thrones was soon made manifest.  A systematic political opposition, vehement, daring, and inflexible, sprang from a schism about trifles, altogether unconnected with the real interests of religion or of the state.  Before the close of the reign of Elizabeth this opposition began to show itself.  It broke forth on the question of the monopolies.  Even the imperial Lioness was compelled to abandon her prey, and slowly and fiercely to recede before the assailants.  The spirit of liberty grew with the growing wealth and intelligence of the people.  The feeble struggles and insults of James irritated instead of suppressing it; and the events which immediately followed the accession of his son portended a contest of no common severity, between a king resolved to be absolute, and a people resolved to be free.